Catalhoyuk's houses had no front doors and no streets between them, because residents walked across the rooftops and climbed down ladders to get home.
A town with no streets
The settlement's mudbrick houses were built wall to wall with no gaps for streets, and entry was through openings in the roof reached by ladder, meaning movement across the town happened largely over the rooftops rather than at ground level, an urban arrangement without a close parallel at most other early Neolithic sites of comparable scale.
Living with the dead underfoot
Bodies were commonly buried beneath the floors of the houses residents continued to live in, and in a number of cases skulls were later removed, plastered to recreate facial features, and painted before being reburied or curated elsewhere, a practice suggesting an ongoing relationship between the living and specific deceased individuals rather than a single, final act of burial.
Bull horns built into the walls
Many houses incorporated bucrania, plastered bull skulls or horn cores set into walls and platforms, alongside painted murals of hunting scenes and geometric patterns, imagery that earlier interpretation read as straightforwardly religious. As this entry's companion article notes, one influential reading of these motifs, as evidence of a matriarchal Mother Goddess cult, has since been substantially revised by later archaeological scholarship, even as the bull imagery itself remains an undisputed and striking feature of the site.